FTC Says Virtual Worlds Bad For Minors 355
eldavojohn writes "A new report from the FTC is claiming minors have access to explicit content via online virtual worlds such as those found in online games. The report makes five recommendations to keep little Johnny away from the harms of Barrens chat: Use more effective age-screening mechanisms to prevent children from registering in adult virtual worlds; Use or enhance age-segregation techniques to make sure that people interact only with others in their age group; Re-examine language filters to ensure that they detect and eliminate messages that violate rules of behavior in virtual worlds; Provide more guidance to community enforcers in virtual worlds so they are better able to review and rate virtual world content, report potential underage users, and report any users who appear to be violating rules of behavior; and Employ a staff of specially trained moderators who are equipped to take swift action against rule violations."
Nanny Business (Score:2, Interesting)
We already know the details of nanny government and all that jazz... but when are the businesses going to stand up, pool their money and fight being pushed into becoming nannys themselves? They may think its cool now to have a little power, but soon they will start getting sued by parents for not keeping their little dissident children in line. It won't be facebook, craigslist, and myspace being sued. It will be the companies that run games like WOW, Everquest, EVE, and the rest getting sued for the GM's and Dev's not keeping predators out of the game world.
People are a sleep at the wheel here!
Re:Or parents... (Score:5, Interesting)
Prevent Beneficial Interaction (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole segregation thing is crap. 95% of interactions between a child and an adult are positive. Segregation leads to 'Lord of the Flies' inbreeding of immature thought. Mixed company is the proper company for a child to have to learn how to grow up to be a sane, responsible, rounded individual.
Look at our history... children didn't grow up in segregated 'child only' areas... they grew up working with their parents and community members. They were exposed to life.
I'm of the opinion that over 95% of interactions between a child and adult are positive. How many of you have grouped with an obviously young kid, and helped them through an instance? Asked them to please be more polite, or type neatly, or don't ninja all the loot? Grouping, chatting, and talking with more mature players is what helps children learn maturity (at least in the context of an MMO).
Perhaps some of the other points of the article have merit, but I'm quite against age segregation. We are a community... act like it.
true in the real world, too (Score:4, Interesting)
[...] minors have access to explicit content via online virtual worlds [...]
Minors have access to "explicit" content in the real world, too. How is this any different? Are these concerns merely puritanical in nature, or is there evidence that this is actually harmful?
Parents need to be Parents (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Or parents... (Score:5, Interesting)
The liquor and other poisonous ingestibles are the same. All sane parents keep the kids away from these things.All sane parents make sure small children cannot get to the alcohol, drugs, or drain cleaner. Most of these have child proof caps for as a backup.
At some age, most kids will learn not to OD on drugs or drain cleaner. I think we all agree that some don't. Also, many parents will teach children about the proper dosage of drugs, alcohol, and the such. This is the serving you get of wine. This is the serving you get of beer. This is when you drink cognac. If you need an asprin, this is what you should take. Clearly not all parent teach such civility, just like not all parent teach how to set a table, which fork to use, or to open doors for others, but the many do.
But learning and teaching takes time, which is why children can just be set out on their own and be expected to make long term best decisions, which may not be spending 10 hours a day playing the video games, or for a 14 year old trolling for facebook to find an older man to go out with in hope of impregnation, then a house and child support.
Re:Or parents... (Score:2, Interesting)
Mod Parent (both of them) down.
We as a people should not have to tell people to read the article before they run around spouting off.
Oh. Wait. This is slashdot. What am I thinking?
"I'm starting to realize a good chunk of those pushing for things like this..." Yeah. "Things like this" are reccomendations that people who are going to host a childrens site really ought to have moderators who can tell when a 20 year old pedophile is sending foul language to my 8 year old daughter on the Build-a-bear site and then do something about it.
HOW DARE THEY SUGGEST SUCH A THING.
I am a parent. And $#!@$ you for suggesting that it is lazy of me to expect Build-A-Bear to effectively prevent pedophiles from harassing my daughter on line. There is nothing in this article that states that these things must be implimented everywhere. Its meerly suggesting that sites that are targeted to kids need to make a better effort to protect children.
Re:Times have changed (Score:3, Interesting)
Is "profane" language really such a concern anymore?
Damn, that's profound.
Actually, what's happened is that language considered "profane" has changed it's shape. Example:
HAY n00b KIN U GIVE ME 5 G FOR A SOWARD?
I know that sort of language offends me. Maybe it's simply that the parents want to keep the kids out of their games.
Or: "Your account has been compromised and is now locked. Log in to blizzard.wow-accounts.cardscraper.com to unlock it".
Yep, profane language still exists.
Re:Or parents... (Score:3, Interesting)
Or parents could be parents. Don't want you kids looking at something? Act as the filter don't let them buy/play games that expose them to things you don't want 'em to see....
I personally would argue more that a few kids getting exposed to violence or -gasp- S.E.X. is more than an acceptable tradeoff for freedom.
The problem with arguing along the lines of "Parents should keep their kids from looking at that stuff" is that we all know they're not going to even take reasonable steps, and we all know that kids are going to find ways around their parents' efforts no matter what.
Re:Or parents... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a hard sell when these virtual worlds are marketing the crap out of themselves as substitute babysitters so that parents can relax and leave their kids in front of the screen.
The only marketing done towards children is designed to get the kids to beg mom and dad for the goods. A few tantrums from a spoiled brat are frosting.
It's all well and good to say parents should take charge, but spend 2 minutes in their shoes and you'd have a bit of sympathy.
What they need is support, not blame.
No, I am not a parent (yet anyway), but I am a young adult that was a hellhound to raise. Recently I found out I was autistic, which seemed to put my mom at ease knowing she didn't fail as a parent as badly as she thought she did, and even she had to go it alone while I was young.
Single mother, with an autistic child.
Yes, parents have responsibilities, but let's not take their job for granted.
Re:Or parents... (Score:3, Interesting)
From the FTC site:
Of the 14 virtual worlds in the FTC’s study that were, by design, open to children under age 13, seven contained no explicit content, six contained a low amount of such content, and one contained a moderate amount. Almost all of the explicit content found in the child-oriented virtual worlds appeared in the form of text posted in chat rooms, on message boards, or in discussion forums.
So the FTC studied 27 "online worlds" and of those 14 were listed as open to kids under 13. Of the 14 worlds, 13 of them seem to be doing a good to excellent job of policing their discussion boards and/or chat rooms for inappropriate content. All but one of the sites with inappropriate content were sites that were not registered as open to kids under 13. In other words, not the "Build a Bear" site you mention. The sites actually designed for your daughter (and trust me, I understand your concerns, my daughter is seven) seem to be doing a good job, by and large.
If you want your daughter to use a particular board, visit it and read for a while. If the moderators seem to be doing a good job of removing anything you don't like, then you make a decision as to whether you can trust their moderation style (which probably includes many of the things mentioned in the FCC report). Then YOU, as a parent, can decide which sites are making appropriate efforts.
"Being a parent" isn't necessarily a narrow corridor of "watch everything your kid does to protect them." You can occasionally trust others. But it's up to you to figure out who to trust and who not to.
The ideas mentioned are good ones, but they won't offer adequate protection except the last one ("employ a staff of specially trained moderators"), and that one is impractical for a lot of sites. You're talking about a 24/7 staff of people who can read ALL of the messages coming in and filter them. Plus, there's always a time lag between the time something is posted and the time that even the most trained and talented moderator can catch it and delete it. So even if a moderator is on the job, your daughter might see something occasionally. Plus, you might consider pictures of violent cartoon shows to be inappropriate for your child, while we have an entire TV industry built around this being appropriate entertainment. "What constitutes inappropriate content" is VERY subjective.
I run a handful of discussion boards, and kids would be welcome at all of them as far as I'm concerned, and I moderate them and keep them clean, but I couldn't afford the lawsuit if one of our members said or did something inappropriate and I failed to "protect the children" because I can't read every post before it's put on the website, and I can't monitor it 24/7.
This is the conundrum that the attempts to protect our children have put us in. Those of us who are parents want our children protected against pedophiles. Fair enough.
Those of us who are moderators of discussion boards cannot provide that service with any absolute level of guarantee and still allow strangers to post messages to the discussion boards. Any level of security I offered you would be a false sense, and I'd rather you visit my boards as an interested parent, check them out, and decide whether the community I've built is appropriate for your child. That, in my mind, is proper parenting. You don't have to live along with them on my site, but if you want to trust me, I should EARN that trust, which means YOU, as the parent, need to look at my site and see if you trust me. Just like hiring a babysitter - we don't depend on the government to find us a babysitter who is safe, we depend on knowing the person we're leaving our kids with.
Personally, I "COPA Filter" everything I put up online that allows user input of any kind. If you signed up for an account on one of my boards, you have to check a little tickybox that says "I am over the age of consent in my state or country, and/or I have legal parental consent to access this bo
Re:Or parents... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not Just for Children (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not just video games, and it's not just for children. I recently spent several hours trying to find out how to disable the child protection restrictions on my parent PVR so they could watch their recording of "Downfall", which had been rated 15s. Their complete inability to figure out how to watch a restricted program is I think pretty typical of most users. In short, these restrictions are not just for children. They are for everybody. Like the Great firewall of China, if you can get 90+% of people to just give up on watching what you don't want them to watch, your measures have been a success.
I should note that the "Downfall" program (criticised as being sympathetic to the Nazi's), was the only program they had ever recorded which had implemented such a restriction. One of the Die Hard films sat on right there on the same screen, completely unrated. Downfall was being broadcast on a British television station, at around the time when far right elements like the BNP were on the rise in England, so I'm fairly suspicious of the whole affair.
Censorship is not just for kids. It's for everyone too busy or too unskilled to get around it.
Re:Or parents... (Score:3, Interesting)
craziness (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be more concerned with what sort of effect being plugged into a virtual world does on brain development, physical coordination, compulsive behaviours, addiction, muscle tone and face to face socialization.
The focus on dirty words makes this whole thing a stupid joke.
Re:Prevent Beneficial Interaction (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to run a WoW guild. Everyone in the guild was between 20 and 40. Or so we thought. Our kickass bear tank that we had for months, revealed that he was 13. We hadn't heard him on vent, so we were just dumbfounded. Very polite, mature, organised, and punctual. Guess what?
He was home schooled. One of the best youngsters I've met TBH.